Sunday, 25 November 2012

THREE days before the formal
opening on Friday last week, CORA Secretary-General, Mr. Toyin Akinosho, had set the tone, when he stated that‘Narratives of Conflict,’the
theme for the 14th Lagos Book and Art Festival, LABAF, encapsulates the nation’s body polity and how very
fitting most of the books under review capture the perplexing complexity of
Nigeria’s politics.

The art activist, Akinosho further
stated that LABAF is different from other festivals
because its organisers always
insisted on talking about texts and not just ideas, adding, “we must be
addressing texts and examine Nigeria’s issues, situations through texts”.

This premise appropriately set the tone for the various
discussions that eventually took place in three days of intense conversation on
various books and personalities in the book and culture industry.

FIRST on the bill on Friday was the Bishop of Sokoto
Catholic ArchDiocese, Bishop Matthew Hassan Kukah, whose book, Witness to
Justice brought to public domain
afresh the Truth Commission set up at the inception of Nigeria’s return to
democratic rule in 1999.

While the commission popularly known as Oputa Panel
spiritedly worked to unearth the sundry abuses Nigerians suffered under
military rule, its work never went beyond the prime time soap opera it was at
the time. For wanting Nigerians not to forget that dramatic episode, Kukah
sifted through the dense volumes and brought out a book both for the reader's enjoyment and enlightenment.

Kukah was concerned that Nigeria’s general amnesia and
willingness to forget so quickly had already caught up with the commission he
served as secretary, hence his book, Witness to Justice. The Catholic priest and public intellectual, is not happy that Nigerians have not engaged the
recommendations of the commission with the seriousness it deserves. What has
irked him most is that while he had been invited to several other countries to
talk about the commission, it has generally been forgotten at home.

In his conversation with writer, arts manager, Tolu Ogunlesi, Kukah restated the importance of the
Oputa Panel and its result, saying, “The book makes a lot of difference; that’s
why we are here talking about it. It has sold well beyond the average. But it
has come to me as a great disappointment that there’s no invitation, especially from
nigerian universities, where constant research and reflection on the state of
the nation ought to be taking place, to
ask me what really happened”.

He confessed to approaching the job with cynicism at the
time
of his appointment. He said he did not
believe Nigeria had the courage to withstand the truth to be unmasked by a
commission of such magnitude. He noted, “The book is not about power or here
and now; it’s about the future and to address the anti-intellectualism in our
society. You get a sense that people are in the universities because they just
want to be there.

“In this country, people come into politics without the
barest idea what politics is about. So, the Truth Commission validates the
saying that if you want to hide something from a black man, put it in a book.
No one has done anything about the report ever since”.

On the question of victimhood occasioned by the long years
of military rule, Kukah argued that the strength of the panel was its ability
to have brought together many people of diverse backgrounds to one spot to talk
about the evils done to them by the state and its
apparatuses. He stated, “What held these people together was that Nigeria was a
basket of injustice and evil had become so pervasive. Nigerians now knew that
the military had been so corrosive nobody wants it any more; and dictatorship diminishes humanity.

“Now that we are free, let me put it that way, let’s
treasure it and ensure that the military does not come back. Some of us take
our freedom for granted. So that when a man says that he became born again in prison,
don’t laugh at him; it’s a serious matter. When people have gone through those
traumas, they need to talk about them. Unfortunately, we don’t have the
platform to tell their stories; no therapy to help them heal their traumatic
experiences”.

He noted that in writing Witness to Justice, he has been able to lend his voice to the voiceless
people that came to the commission. He said the commission was as a result of
an environment where power runs amok, as it once did in the country, and even
in a democracy. He also argued that some of the problems plaguing the country
were because of impunity, noting that from the legal, law enforcement to the
system all had been compromised.

Kukah expressed opinion that
it was the vacuum of uncertainty and systemic failures in many areas of
national life that religion was filling, with its many wrong-headed variants
assailing the psyche daily.

Bishop Kukah also spoke on Chinua Achebe’s controversial
book, There Was A Country: A
Personal History of Biafra, saying
reactions to it were that of “a people not ready for things of real value. I
have read the book and I don’t agree with some things in it but if you disagree
with somebody based on the things he has written, then write your own. But like
everything in Nigeria, people are talking about the book because of hearsay.
This is why our country will not be able to overcome the troubles of yesterday.
Today, our democracy means ability to agree with you always; if I disagree with
you, it becomes something else”.

Sitting with Ogunlesi, on
the Concert stage (once a gallow) of the Freedom Park -- which was a Colonial
prison on Broad Street -- Bishop Kukah also entertained questions from the
public on the state of the nation; and he seemed very much pleased with the
enthusiams shown by the secondary students who were in the audience, saying it
shows that it is possible for Nigeria to have a politically conscious citizenry
in the future.

THEcolloquium, which was on ‘Narratives of Conflict’,
explored some relatively new texts that highlight
the nation’s recent historical march and the part played by these participants
in the shaping of the democratic space. The texts include Open Graveyard by Wale Osun, Out of the Shadows by Kayode Fayemi (now governor of Ekiti State), Rose
and Bullets by Prof. Akachi Ezeigbo
and There Was A Country by Chinua
Achebe. The session had Dr. Niran Okewole, Tade Ipadeola, and Deji Toye; it was moderated by Tunji Lardner. One of the
authors, Ezeigbo, who was present was also invited to join the panelists.

These four books dwell on some critical phases Nigeria has
navigated in the cause of its 50 years of
existence. The books explore the many high dramas Nigeria and Nigerians have
undergone; how a promising nation soon
found itself floundering shortly after independence and the spirited efforts
made to reshape it ever since, with the ubiquitous military that hijacked it
for a long time. The stories are accounts of individual encounters with the
state might under military rule and the not-so-pleasant results of these
encounters both on the psyche of the individuals and society at large.

For Ipadeola and the other panelists, Nigeria’s failure
produced its shock waves on these writers with the result that they have
attempted to narrate this same story in their own unique voices that often
differ from each other to the point of conflict. So much so that the reader is
left open-mouthed as to whether it is the same communal experience, of military
rule and dictatorship and the democratic struggles that left many wounded,
maimed and dead -- the writers are writing about.

How then can Nigeria’s story be properly understood if there
was no one unifying, single story by the many writers telling her story? Is
there a thing as a grand narrative to tell a country’s story?

Ipadeola submitted, “Achebe, Kukah and Fayemi all seem to be
asking: How did a promising country become unprepared for the calamity that was
coming? Whether it’s government, civil society, religious structures, things
didn’t just happen as they were supposed to. We’re at the danger of isolating
the 1990s (the military era) as the dark period of Nigeria’s history, but there
have been crises since the 1950s. There’s a lot more that Nigeria can gain by
closely studying the writers under scrutiny who were there when these things
were happening.

“Achebe’s a great book but it falls into the error of
arguing and not clarifying. I think Achebe knows how powerful his prose is and
uses it to argue. Why was there no charge of genocide laid against anyone for
the dead or living? Until we begin to have biographies, we will not be able to
break out of the traps of untruths,” remarked Ipadeola.

The lawyer, poet, and president of Nigeria chapter of Poets, Essayists
and Novelists, Ipadeola also argued that although Achebe’s book is an important one, no African
author had risen to write a book as well as Russia’s Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s August
1914 to make issues that had been
nebulous clear.

On whether there could be a single, unifying narrative about
the country’s history, the panelists differed significantly. Okewole asked: Is
there a single narrative in all the stories of conflict? He noted that there
could be some flaws in Achebe’s book because it depended on memory, which
lapses over time and that memory is also selective. “Now, we should be looking
at many narratives rather than a grand narrative and to take a decision as a
nation to look at multiple narratives.

“So, why did the Nigerian project fail? Why did it not
happen? Why was the project hijacked? We have to hold the political class
responsible for not doing what they ought to do!”

In her intervention, Ezeigbo said
she believed in subjectivity. She argued
that people are different and respond differently to common issues. To the Professor of
English at the University of Lagos, there
is no such thing as a grand narrative of a country’s
history, as it might seem limiting. She noted that the “Nigerian Civil War had
generated a lot of controversies. Everybody is entitled to his own view.
Achebe’s interpretation is his own memory;my narrative Roses
and Bullets,though fictional, is based on fact as I saw it during
the war as a young schoolgirl in her teenage years”.

Ezeigbo believes that There was
A Country
has stirred controversy because it is an Achebe’s. She said“Many
individuals have written volatile books that have gone unnoticed. This is his
own interpretation of history. Write your own book if you disagree”.

The lawyer, poet and
dramatist, Toye finds Achebe’s view of
Igbo victimhood based on hatred from other ethnic group out of sync with the
reality. He noted that rather than a deterministic view of history, virtual
history should be the guiding light, adding that multiple narratives of history
should be encouraged.

Indeed, Nigeria, like an over excited monkey, has been
dancing on the precipice and neared its tipping point with its many devious
acts that have denied it true nationhood. However, Okewole stated that the country's turning point could be just as dramatic as its
tipping point. The nation’s turning point, stated the
medical doctor, writer, could be the
“coming together of a few people who have the courage of conviction to act” in
a particularly positive manner for the good of all.

STILL in literary
discourse at the festival,under the theme‘My Story, My Country’ the
author of Power, Politics & Death,
the journalist, Segun Adeniyi took the hot seat and was taken to task on issues
surrounding his explosive book, a memoir of his years as spokesman to the late President Umaru Yar’Adua. In what was apparent
defence of the position he took during Yar’Adua’s ill health and final death,
Adeniyi shot off on an emotional note and highlighted the politicisation of a
president’s ill health and death.

Adeniyi, a former editor of ThisDay newspaper before he took
the job of SeniorSpecial
Assistant to the President on Media,
admitted to having taken some crucial decisions to either avert or set in
motion certain events that would have worked negatively or positively to affect
the nation or power equation as it was then. First, Adeniyi asserted, “I had no
regret taking the job; I never knew my stewardship was going to be that
dramatic. The book took me six months to complete at Harvard University where I
did my Fellowship”.

The former presidential spokesperson said he fell out of
favour with President Goodluck Jonathan, then Vice President, for failing to call him Acting
President at a point when it appeared Yar’Adua had become incapacitated. But he
insisted that he didn’t even know the exact state of health of the President to
have acted appropriately. But that when he realised his mistake by the unfolding events the following
day, he acted quickly by calling a press briefing where he corrected himself.
But by then, the political mood had been soured and a purported 'cabal' theory had
gained ascendancy.

In a rising tone laden with so much emotion, Adeniyi avowed,
“Nobody knew what was going on; everybody was apprehensive. I didn’t know
anything either. It didn’t make any sense to call Jonathan Acting President
when the President was in the country. But when I realised it, I corrected myself. There were all sorts of
dynamics -- politics, religion; people
wanted power to stay where it was. But next day, I called a press briefing and
called Jonathan Acting President and because of that thing, people thought
there was a cabal and people called me all sorts of names”.

Adeniyi blamed the uncertainty at the time to apparent
lacuna and inability of the Office of the Attorney-General and the National
Assembly to advice the President appropriately and promptly on what to do but
none of them did anything. He, however, noted that he would rather not blame
anybody because of “the nature of our country; next time, we will learn from
it. We have learnt from it. The deputy Governor of Taraba State is now Acting
Governor as a result of the Constitutional amendment.”

QUOTE:

Now that we are free, let me
put it that way, let’s treasure it and ensure that the military does not come
back. Some of us take our freedom for granted. So that when a man says that he
became born again in prison, don’t laugh at him; it’s a serious matter. When
people have gone through those traumas, they need to talk about them.
Unfortunately, we don’t have the platform to tell their stories; no therapy to
help them heal their traumatic experiences.